Kid Made Famous by Humans of New York Photo Interviews NASA Chief About Mars

Aspiring journalists aren’t always afforded access to senior level NASA officials, especially when they’re only 10 years old. But, that’s exactly what a kid named Max, whose Dad is a CNN producer, asked for when queried by Humans of New York about his career goals.

And all it took was ten days for Max’s dreams to materialize in a sit-down interview with NASA administrator Charlie Bolden, where the young man inquired about the future of America’s dealings in space, chief among them exploring Mars.

Some takeaways from the interview synthesize, albeit briefly, NASA’s main directive for the next 30 years: Getting humans to the red planet.

“The big destination for us is Mars…sending humans to Mars in the 2030s and to do that we have a rocket that’s called a space launch system…and it’s gonna be the largest rocket we’ve ever built,” Bolden said in response to Goldstone’s first question.

Bolden also discussed NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which will see SpaceX and Boeing use their privately developed rocket ships to send astronauts to low-earth orbit.

The most pointed question asked by Max during the interview, pertained to NASA’s longterm goals: “What do you think NASA will accomplish at the end of my lifetime?”

Bolden couldn’t speak to the next century of NASA’s endeavors, but did mention that in the next 20 years, he hopes that “we will have migrated astronauts out of low-earth orbit, we’ll be operating routinely around the moon again, we’ll be in what we call our proving ground for going on to mars, and we’ll be right on the verge of sending humans to the martian environment for the very first time.”

Maybe by the year 2045, Max will be there, covering our first contact with Mars.